Storage CenterComing To New York

The New York Battery and Energy Storage Technology Consortium (NY-BEST) and DNV KEMA Energy & Sustainability have partnered to invest nearly $23 million to build and grow the new Battery and Energy Storage Technology Testing and Commercialization Center in Rochester, N.Y.

Under the partnership agreement, DNV KEMA will provide investments of up to $16 million, including re-location of its existing energy storage testing operations from its laboratory facility in Pennsylvania to the new center in Rochester.

NY-BEST will provide the initial investment of $6.9 million from state grant funds for capital facility improvements and purchase of additional advanced testing equipment for the center.

The Test and Commercialization Center will provide a suite of test, validation and independent certification capabilities to help accelerate commercial deployment of energy storage technologies. Work is under way to construct the facility, and the center is slated to be complete this fall and opened in December.

Nordex ExpandsTesting Methods

Substantial investments made to its technical center last year now enable turbine manufacturer Nordex to increase its wind turbine testing capabilities.

From its Rostock, Germany, production site, Nordex is performing advanced tests of its Generation Gamma and Generation Delta wind turbines and related components.

Nordex notes the installation of 15 testing facilities, including an azimuth and motor/vibration test rig, enable better quality control for the testing of core components fitted to the company’s turbines. The company says its climate chamber – which can simulate temperatures from -40° C to 60° C – gives it a greater understanding of how components operate in extreme conditions.

“In addition to larger rotors, a greater installed capacity and growing tower heights, real-life conditions at wind turbine sites, which can be quite harsh in some places, are increasingly playing a role in the development of our systems,” explains Dr. Jurgen Zeschky, the company’s CEO. “Our turbines must operate perfectly in extreme cold or heat, in icy or very humid conditions and under different grid conditions.”

Ming Yang BuildsTwo-Blade Prototype

The 6.5 MW SCD prototype utilizes Ming Yang’s two-bladed SCD technology and is designed mainly for offshore operation. The company says installation and testing of the prototype are expected to commence by the end of the year.

Vestas, NRG SystemsIntegrate Solutions

Vestas has announced that its WindData Explorer wind analysis software is now compatible with NRG Systems’ WindPortal fleet management tool.

WindPortal is a Web-based fleet management tool for NRG Systems’ turnkey Grand Symphonie resource assessment system. According to the companies, the software allows users to remotely access a fleet status dashboard, as well as up-to-date wind measurement data. With the click of a button, the data can then be imported into Vestas’ WindData Explorer software for analysis.

WindData Explorer is a free suite of tools used to visualize, analyze and filter wind data. The system supports traceability of changes made to data and enables sharing of information through a standardized wind data format or PDF report. It offers automatic detection of parameters in various logger files, including NRG Systems’ Grand Symphonie.

Firms StudyDesign Constraints

GE Global Research and Sandia National Laboratories have research that could significantly impact the design of future wind turbine blades.

Using high-performance computing to perform complex calculations, engineers have overcome previous design constraints, allowing them to begin exploring ways to design re-engineered wind blades that are low-noise and more prolific power-producers.

According to GE, its scope of work focused on advancing wind turbine blade noise prediction methods. Aerodynamic blade noise is the dominant noise source on modern, utility-scale wind turbines and represents a key constraint in wind turbine design. Efforts to reduce blade noise can help reduce the cost of wind energy and increase power output.

GE predicts that a 1-decibel quieter rotor design would result in a 2% increase in annual energy yield per turbine. With approximately 240 GW of new wind installations forecast globally over the next five years, a 2% increase would create more than 5 GW of additional wind power capacity.

“There’s no question; aerodynamic noise is a key constraint in wind turbine blade design today,” explains Mark Jonkhof, wind technology platform leader at GE Global Research. “By using high-performance computing to advance current engineering models that are used to predict blade noise, we can build quieter rotors with greater blade tip velocity that produce more power. This not only means lower energy costs for consumers, but also a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.”

To ensure that GE’s wind blades do not pose noise issues, airfoil level acoustic measurements are performed in wind tunnels, field measurements are done to validate acceptable noise levels and noise-reducing operating modes are implemented in the control system. Better modeling will help maintain the current low noise levels while boosting output.

For a period of three months, this LES simulation of the turbulent air flow past a wind blade section was continuously performed on the Red Mesa HPC. The resulting flow-field predictions yielded valuable insights that were used to assess current engineering design models, the assumptions they make that most impact noise predictions, and the accuracy and reliability of model choices.

“We found that high-fidelity models can play a key role in accurately predicting trailing edge noise,” adds Jonkhof. “We believe that the results achieved from our simulations would, at the very least, lay the groundwork for improved noise design models.”

Vestas Powers UpTest Bench

Vestas has begun operation of what it says is the wind industry’s biggest test bench at its global testing center in Aarhus, Denmark. According to the company, the 20 MW bench is capable of testing the full nacelle of the V164-8.0 MW, gauging the performance, robustness and reliability of the turbine over a simulated 25-year lifetime.

The test bench is 42 meters long and nine meters wide. Including the motors, wind simulator and generators, it weighs nearly 700 tons, and Vestas installed 50-meter-deep concrete foundations to support the weight. The company says the motors powering the test bench produce 20 MW – the equivalent of 26,820 brake horsepower – and the torque exerted on the components of the turbine can be up to 18 meganewton meters.

The test bench will stress the drivetrain, including the gearbox, main shaft and generator of the V164-8.0 MW – in a controlled environment – reproducing the harsh wind conditions in the North Sea.

“Vestas has invested in the industry’s most powerful test bench to ensure the [V164-8.0 MW] turbine will perform in challenging conditions for 25 years,” says Anders Vedel, Vestas’ chief technology officer. “The superior testing expertise we have accumulated over the last decade is a key part of giving confidence to our customers that the machine is of the high quality that they expect from Vestas.”

The product, UpWind Sentinel, helps owners and operators monitor the health of drivetrains to avoid unscheduled maintenance and costly component failures. The product can identify damaged high-speed gearbox bearings and alert an owner that scheduled bearing replacements are required to prevent a catastrophic failure and loss of production.

UpWind cites studies that show that predictive maintenance can reduce expenses by 47%, compared to unscheduled or reactive maintenance.

New Nordex UnitsGet Certification

Nordex reports that its N117/3000 and N100/3300 Generation Delta turbines have received all design evaluation certificates in accordance with the IEC standard Design Evaluation Conformity Statement. In addition, the company notes it has already installed three of the next-generation turbines in Germany and Denmark.

As part of the certification, TUV Nord reviewed the design of Nordex’s turbine configurations in all tower, climate and frequency versions.

The N117/3000 with tower heights of 91 and 120 meters is certified for medium wind speeds, while the 141-meter version mounted on a hybrid tower is certified for low-wind locations of up to 7.5 m/s.

Certificates for hub heights of 75 and 100 meters have been received for the N100/3300. In addition, all turbines have been awarded DIBt type approval for the German market. Accordingly, Nordex says all relevant documents required to apply for building permits are now available.

Furthermore, Nordex has assembled and installed its first Generation Delta turbines. An N117/3000 mounted atop a 91-meter steel tube tower and an N100/3300 with a hub height of 100 meters are to be connected to the grid at the Janneby wind farm in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, in the near future. The company says preparations for the measurement and validation program for type certification are proceeding at full swing at the wind farm.

An N100/3300 turbine with a 75-meter hub height has already been installed at a strong-wind site at the Riso/DTU wind-testing field operated by the National Laboratory in Bovlingbjerg, Denmark, directly on the North Sea coast.

This is to be followed by the installation of two N117/3000 turbines later this year – one with a hub height of 91 meters and the other with a hub height of 120 meters – in Raahe, Finland, under a contract Nordex was awarded in February by Raahen Tuulienergia Oy.

This coming winter, the company will also be mounting an N117/3000 on a 141-meter hybrid tower at the Kohlbrandhoft site in the port of Hamburg, Germany. Nordex says this means that over the next few months, Generation Delta turbines will be operating at all available tower heights.

Nordex plans to commence series production of Generation Delta at the beginning of 2014. The first major project under contract – encompassing 24 cold-climate versions of the N117/3000 turbine plus an anti-icing system – is to be installed in northern Sweden next summer.

IBM Tool IncreasesWind Reliability

IBM says its power- and weather-modeling technology can help utilities increase the reliability of renewable energy resources, such as wind and solar.

Using weather prediction and analytics to accurately forecast the availability of wind and solar energy will allow utilities to integrate more renewable energy into the power grid and help reduce carbon emissions.

IBM says its system, Hybrid Renewable Energy Forecasting (HyRef), uses weather-modeling capabilities, advanced cloud-imaging technology and sky-facing cameras to track cloud movements near real time, while sensors on the turbines monitor wind speed, temperature and direction. When combined with analytics technology, the data-assimilation-based solution can produce accurate local weather forecasts within a wind farm as far as one month in advance or in 15-minute increments.

Additionally, HyRef can predict the performance of each individual wind turbine and estimate the amount of generated renewable energy by using local weather forecasts. This level of insight will enable utilities to better manage the variable nature of wind and solar and more accurately forecast the amount of power that can be redirected into the power grid or stored. It will also allow energy organizations to integrate other conventional sources, such as coal and natural gas.

“Applying analytics and harnessing big data will allow utilities to tackle the intermittent nature of renewable energy and forecast power production from solar and wind in a way that has never been done before,” says Brad Gammons, general manager of IBM’s Global Energy and Utilities Industry. “We have developed an intelligent system that combines weather and power forecasting to increase system availability and optimize power grid performance.”

According to IBM, State Grid Jibei Electricity Power Co. Ltd. (SG-JBEPC), a subsidiary company of the State Grid Corp. of China, is already using the system to integrate renewable energy into the grid. This initiative led by SG-JBEPC is phase one of the Zhangbei 670 MW demonstration project, the world’s largest renewable energy initiative combining wind and solar power, energy storage and transmission.

By using the wind-forecasting technology, phase one of the Zhangbei project aims to increase the integration of renewable power generation by 10%. The efficient use of generated energy allows the utility to reduce wind and solar curtailment, while analytics provides the needed intelligence to enhance grid operations.

Vestas UnveilsBlade Prototype

Vestas has produced the first prototype 80-meter blade for the V164-8.0 MW offshore wind turbine at its R&D center on the Isle of Wight, U.K.

Vestas says the 80-meter blade is the longest ever produced by the company, and it uses the structural shell design, through which the loads of the blade are carried in the shell rather than using a spar at the center of the blade.

In order to validate the strength and reliability of the blade, it will be tested to its limits for six months, reproducing the challenging wind conditions of the North Sea over a simulated 25-year lifetime, Vestas adds.

The V164-8.0 MW prototype will be installed in the first quarter of 2014 at a Danish national testing center.

RAM AssociatesReceives U.S. Patent

Wind resource assessment and turbine micrositing consultancy RAM Associates says it has received a U.S. patent for wind-modeling algorithms used in its RAMWind modeling software, which produces estimates of wind speeds at turbine sites.

RAM Associates says its terrain-based wind model, RAMWind, has proven to be more accurate than other commercially available models.

The company says it is working toward introducing volume two of the RAMWind software, which will allow modeling of wind speeds based on the input of a single anemometer tower location. RAMWind is capable of resolving terrain effects to a high degree of accuracy, suitable for wake model validation studies. The company notes volume two should be available before the end of this year.